Sophisticated Redesign for a Benetti Yacht

It can take the good people at Benetti more than five years to design and build a single luxury yacht. The Italian shipyard has been in operation for more than 130 years, and in the last 40 of them it has earned a reputation as a creator of some of the world’s finest private watercraft. Suffice it to say the company is quite protective of that reputation. It is not well known for bending over backward to accommodate landlubberly designers who wish to modify its unique, painstakingly wrought creations after the fact.

Unsurprisingly, Benetti was a bit skeptical of Bernard Desjardins, a Florida-based designer whose many commissions over the years had never before included a yacht. But when a longtime client, an international businessman, expressed a desire to have Desjardins redesign an existing 155-foot, four-deck Benetti, the shipbuilder held its tongue. “They weren’t too enthusiastic to see a yacht designer who didn’t have any yacht-design expertise,” admits Desjardins. “But because of who our client was, they had no alternative.”

Though most purchasers of luxury megayachts, as they’re called, are willing to wait five years or even longer for a custom-made craft, Desjardins’s client didn’t want to wait that long. But the shipbuilder, understandably, was concerned that significantly altering an existing Benetti yacht, as Desjardins’s client was proposing, might end up adulterating the company’s exacting criteria. “They expressed their concerns,” says the designer. “But then they saw how we work. We’re very systematic in our approach. In the end, it was a good team effort—although we pushed them to the limit.”

Benetti’s proprietary interest in maintaining a yacht’s specifications and standards go beyond mere pride. Changing anything on a yacht can affect the weight of the vessel, which in turn can have deleterious consequences. “We had to stay within certain parameters, or we would hurt the performance,” says Desjardins. He and his team were aware that even the smallest detail—the choice of this finish over that one, the addition of a wall panel or a ribbon of trim—could alter the way the yacht handled certain types of waves, which could jeopardize its accreditation to sail in international waters.

And so, with no small amount of trepidation, Desjardins mounted the tightrope between giving the client exactly what he wanted and not changing things too much—which could result in both insult to the yacht builder and injury to the yacht. At times the balancing act could be perilous, such as when he wanted to eliminate a pair of structural columns in the main deck’s living area. The columns were structural because they helped support the control tower above—not exactly the kinds of things that can casually be removed. But his client wanted a grand salon with an open plan; the columns would have, literally, gotten in the way. A clever engineering solution was found, and Benetti was gingerly approached. “These are the sorts of changes that yacht builders usually do not accept,” Desjardins says with a knowing laugh, before going on to describe the well-appointed (and, it should be mentioned, wide-open) grand salon.

A startling variety of international hardwoods—Hawaiian koa, American cherry, African anegre and a Brazilian duo of mahogany and bubinga—lend a clubby feel to this space, though an abundance of large windows keep things from feeling claustrophobic. A curved fiberglass bar, covered with shagreen and topped with green onyx, begins here and works its way outside onto the aft deck. It is, in effect, an extension of the grand salon—“a continuation of it, as a deck, where the bulk of entertainment takes place,” says Desjardins. “The rest of the yacht is really private, and no one but the owner has access.”

Decks are connected by the remarkable spiral staircase, which Desjardins calls “the signature of the yacht. It makes a bold statement at the point of arrival.” There is indeed something grand about this staircase of dark wood, leather and curved glass; it can’t help but evoke the golden era of ocean liners, when lengthy transatlantic voyages were glamorous affairs. The sight of a well-heeled guest descending onto the main deck’s blue- marble floor, champagne flute in hand, surely constitutes a spectacle unto itself.

In the round master stateroom, Desjardins “respected the curve” and placed the bed in the center of the room, attaching to it a rounded headboard. He arranged it all beneath a circular mirror that does more than create the illusion of space; it celebrates the low-ceilinged room’s unorthodox shape and slyly suggests a grand rotunda.

Though he and his team “pushed the envelope,” in Desjardins’s own words, in the end, everyone—even his once-skeptical audience of shipbuilders—appears quite happy with how things have turned out. The final product is a yacht that honors its builder’s 135-year history but satisfies its owner’s desire to imprint it with a personal stamp.

“This yacht,” says Bernard Desjardins, “is really one-of-a-kind.” The phrase is doubtless overused. In this case, however, it happens to be entirely true.